


A Dark Caprice

by Paian



Series: The Lost City [3]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Blow Jobs, Episode Related, Episode: s07e22 Lost City (2), Hand Job, M/M, Wordcount: 10.000-30.000, crossword puzzle, silent sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-09-28
Updated: 2007-09-28
Packaged: 2017-10-09 03:01:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/82317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paian/pseuds/Paian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Starts about an hour before Daniel first meets Weir.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Dark Caprice

0555\. On his back, in his bed. Monday. Dawn in the windows. Daniel sprawled across him, heavy, sweet. Deeply asleep.

He waited one minute. No morning wood for either of them. Too much action over the weekend. How long did Daniel take to shower, shave, dress, chug coffee? Twenty minutes? Crap, should have checked him for beard burn, hickeys. Do that when he got up.

He waited another minute. Better give him a full half-hour, get a couple of mugs of coffee into him. If he'd woken up five minutes earlier he could have had the coffee made, but that would have required leaving this bed, this warmth, this weight, ten minutes before he had to, and no fucking way. He waited one more minute. Used to wake up with his wife sprawled across him and twitch to defend himself, twitch to get free, fight to remember where he was and who he was with, never let her know that, hoped she hadn't known. He used to wake up groping for his weapon or his tags, in a terror that he'd die unidentified and without a fight in some swamp or desert hellhole. He'd woken up a few times in strangers' beds, in motel-room beds, just before the hammer of the hangover came down, the gut punch of sick loneliness and disgust. Here he woke up happy, feeling Daniel before he reached for him, reaching for him before he even had a name for him.

The minute ended. "Daniel," he said quietly. "Wake up."

"Fmmmp," Daniel said, and groped for covers that weren't there, and burrowed into Jack.

Jack grinned hugely. Basked in the warm, damp breath on his collarbone. Savored the erection growing against the outside of his thigh, the sleepy, fuzzy way Daniel came to awareness of it, thrust against him with a soft moan.

"Jack?" Daniel said, with the eerie clarity of the not-awake. "Where are we?"

"In my bed," Jack said. His head said _our_, but that was wishful thinking, and it was the start of a hard day, so he didn't indulge the notion out loud.

"That's good," Daniel said, the words trailing off into vagueness as he slid back just below sleep's threshold. Then: "Is it time?"

"One more minute," Jack said.

He'd like to stroke him awake. Light fingernails on skin, through hair. Too much like foreplay; there wasn't time to follow through, so he didn't start. He settled for a warm hand on tousled hair, the gratification of the appreciative sigh it returned, the thoughtless way the big muscled frame sank into him for that last minute.

The minute ended. He turned himself out from under, planted a firm kiss on Daniel's forehead because he didn't trust his own restraint if he went for the mouth, and pushed back. "Time, Doctor Jackson."

Daniel sat up immediately, beautifully naked, drawing one knee up to sit sleepy and mussed for a second, reacquiring his bearings. He touched the hard-on vaguely.

The sight was too much for Jack. He rolled out of bed. "Coffee in five."

"A lot of coffee," Daniel said, and reached for his glasses.

The Ancients' muttering surged unpleasantly as Jack pulled on sweats and went out to the kitchen. For a few minutes his awareness was split in three. One part of him was struggling not to fight the wholescale invasion of his head. One part of him was warmly happy and energized and not thinking very hard. One part of him was ticking off responsibilities, itemizing the logistics of a first day under new command structure, dismissing the new director's civilian status from his attention -- Daniel's job to liase -- and focusing on what any new commander would require from him. Support staff would have provided most of what she needed over the weekend, but there were things he'd have to see to before the 0800 briefing, and he had to see to them while she was otherwise occupied. 0730 should do it. Half an hour behind Daniel, fifteen minutes before Carter and Teal'c if they reported as usual and didn't do what Daniel was doing. Consensus and common sense had chosen Daniel for the first contact. They'd probably stick to procedure and show up when they were supposed to, not before.

By the time he'd made the coffee and cleaned up a bit, that last third of his awareness had spread to fill his thoughts. But his heart stayed warm. He knocked lightly on the bathroom door, pushed it open, stood with Daniel's mug in hand, smiling, watching him shave. "You want something to eat?"

Daniel's eyes softened, but he didn't smile and kept his attention on what he was doing. _With my razor_, Jack thought, trying to be grumpy and feeling only affection. "Not hungry," Daniel said, through the corner of his mouth. "Big day."

"Mm." Jack watched him finish, rinse, pat his face dry, and had the coffee halfway there when he turned to reach for it. Daniel gulped half of it down, gave a short sigh of relief, then started for the doorway. "Hang on," Jack said. "Lift your chin. Turn around."

"I already checked."

"You can't see all of you. Let's go, full three-sixty." He gave him a close visual once-over. "OK. You're good to go."

"Little beard burn here," Daniel said, tapping the side of his chin, glancing in the mirror.

"Could be razor burn. Any on me?"

Daniel did a cursory check of Jack's face and neck, then looked down into his coffee a little faster than he had to. "Nope," he said on another sip. "Want a full inspection?"

"Nope." As long as one of them was clear and Jack didn't have any matching marks above the neckline, there was no need. He went out to haul Daniel's duffel out of the closet and toss it on the bed.

"And no one's going to blame you," Daniel said with a smile, moving to unzip the duffel, "if you come in looking like you spent your downtime fucking your brains out."

"Given what's in those brains right now, they might," Jack said, and headed back to the kitchen to pour himself some cereal. Eating was never a problem for him no matter what he faced.

He made toast for Daniel anyway, heavy on butter and jam, and Daniel ate it with his second cup of coffee.

"Listen, Daniel," Jack said, "a dark Caprice pulled over up the street while you were in the shower. They'll probably wait for me, but if they follow you, ignore them. Don't play games on the road."

"OK," Daniel said with his mouth full, and finished his coffee. "'A dark caprice.' There's poetry in that."

"Not epic. Haiku, maybe. Budget cuts."

"I'm gone," Daniel said, rinsing his mug. "You'll be in ... ?"

"Half an hour after you. Keep her talking. I have to square things with some of the team leaders."

"A real half-hour, or a crossword half-hour?"

"Get out of here. Be nice to the new director."

"I'm always nice," Daniel said, lifting the keys to his Jeep. "I'm the nice one."

"Go. No laughing when you walk out. No smiling. No _glowing_."

"I am not glowing."

"You are so, so glowing. Stop glowing."

Daniel made his features comically serious. "No glowing," he acknowledged firmly.

They broke into smiles at the same time, then just looked at each other for a long moment. No embrace, no words; as 0630 clicked over in Jack's head, Daniel closed his eyes briefly, then nodded and reached for the doorknob.

Jack stepped back with the movement of the door, out of view, and left it for Daniel to pull closed behind him. Listened to the light steps down the walkway, the dull click of the Wrangler unlocking by remote, the driver's-side door opening and closing, the engine turning over, the transmission engaging. Listened some more; the Caprice didn't follow.

He stripped the bed and stuffed everything into the big washer in the basement and left it running. Twenty minutes later he was showered and shaved and on the road. The dark sedan pulled out behind him, promptly and openly. Just making sure he returned his headful of Ancient as promised -- and letting him know it.

&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;

His cell rang halfway to the mountain.

"O'Neill."

"Bra'tac just came through the gate. Anubis is launching an attack on Earth, ETA within three days."

"Weir there?"

"Yes."

"In the room?"

"No."

"You talk to her?"

"Five-minute chat. Cautious thumbs-up. She was good with Bra'tac."

"Call Cart-- "

"She's changing now. Teal'c's with Bra'tac."

"Briefing moved up?"

"No, she couldn't for some reason. Want me to patch you through to -- "

"Whatshisname, yeah, thanks."

"Hold on."

Daniel transferred him to his staff aide, and he arranged to have the team leaders waiting in his office instead of calling for them when he got in and taking the five minutes to check orders and paperwork before they arrived.

The Caprice followed him all the way into the compound, right through the checkpoint, and parked in the row in front of him. He didn't bother peering in or making eye contact in the side mirror, just gave it a rap on the trunk with his knuckles as he passed.

Carter ambushed him as he exited the second elevator, and he gestured her into the locker room with him while he changed. No update, understood that Daniel had called him, just wanted to check in, see how he was. "I'm OK," he said quietly, briefly meeting her eyes.

"You look tired, sir."

"I am. But still me, so far."

She nodded. "OK. Briefing room, seven-fifty-five?"

"Be there or be square," he said, buttoning up, and she took the casual dismissal with the backstep-and-turn she reverted to sometimes under stress, apparently unconsciously, like a tic. He shook off what didn't bear thinking about, and headed off to the desk he took pains to avoid.

His office was crammed with team leaders -- stand-down hadn't put a dent in attendance. They were not happy campers. Jack didn't bother with preliminaries, just said, "OK, talk to me." They were pissed about the suspension of scheduled missions, their scientific personnel were giving them shit about the damage to ongoing projects, and civilian oversight what the fuck?

He worked out the immediate logistical problems it was possible to work out. He explained his own situation and the situation Bra'tac had reported and expressed every confidence in Reynolds, who would replace him operationally and administratively if and when he was knocked out of commission. He told them not to pull any crap on the civilian, they served their president and the president had put her in charge, and then let them gripe some more. They were well aware of everything he was saying. The point was to get them to vent behind the closed door of his office so they could suck it up when they walked out.

It went pretty much the way he expected. The only thing he heard that surprised him was Coburn asking why it wasn't Doctor Jackson, and a bunch of the others chiming in -- angrily, already pretty worked up about it. Doctor Jackson was just as qualified as this Doctor Weir on paper, right? If it had to be a civilian, why couldn't it be the one who'd earned his stripes? Underneath that was bitter resentment at Hammond being transferred out, but they'd have beefed about that among themselves, not to him, even if Hammond's replacement had come from a branch of service not represented in the room, even if privately they were pissed that it wasn't Jack himself being promoted into command. This was just as much about loyalty but more about respect and trust. Nobody was mutineering here, but they were pissed and unsettled enough to cross a line by expressing this complaint and making this comparison. They'd take orders from Daniel. Daniel knew what he was doing. A civilian outsider came with none of the authority of rank that would have canceled out -- or at least balanced out -- their mistrust of the FNG.

Jack had the sudden sense that he was looking at a chessboard, zooming in on somebody else's match -- a match, in fact, where a new player had taken over right in the middle of the endgame. Hayes was not a military man. There was a difference between military tactics and corporate tactics, and this latest move reeked of a corporate mindset. Shake things up, inject a fresh perspective, do a little industrial espionage while you were at it. Maybe the Stargate Program _should_ be restructured ... but you did not put a corporate analyst in charge of the armed forces in the middle of a war. Hayes was either a brilliant strategist whose reasoning wasn't yet clear to Jack, or a walking disaster with executive powers.

Jack had no answers for them and nothing to reassure them with. It didn't matter; the objective was to get the shit out of their systems. He didn't need to remind them of their duty again -- no matter what they thought of this new CO, they were disciplined, seasoned officers and nobody was going to be checking with him or Reynolds or Daniel before they carried out a direct order from Weir -- so he didn't go drill sergeant on their asses, just gave them enough gruff suck-it-up sympathy to let them feel they'd made their point. But when he ended the meeting, he caught Reynolds' eye, and Dixon's, in a fast, sharp exchange of looks, and confirmed his private opinion: This was fucked up, and the next few weeks were gonna be a bitch, never mind the problems when and if regular gate operations resumed.

What a goddamned stupid time for him to be on the verge of checking out. It was worse professionally than it was personally, and that was saying a hell of a lot right now.

He made it to the briefing room at 0758. Greeted Bra'tac warmly, lobbed a perfunctory good-morning at his team, then said, "So. Three days, huh?"

Bra'tac nodded gravely. "At most."

Jack picked an open file folder up off the table, glanced at it, then tossed it down and said, "Three days from now is a bad day. Thursday's not good for us."

"Why now?" Carter said.

"Anubis believes that we know the location of the Lost City," Teal'c replied.

"We don't," Carter said simply.

Jack threw a look over his shoulder, not quite connecting with Daniel on the other side of her. _Here we go_, he thought. _Belaboring the obvious_. But it was a routine they had to go through. "Not yet," he said, and as Daniel added his two cents' worth of obviousness -- "Yes, but he doesn't know that we don't know" -- Jack grazed him briefly with his eyes and turned back to Bra'tac to get around to the useful part of the pre-briefing confab.

The eye-graze-and-turn felt as familiar as it did stilted and juvenile. The way he'd cut him dead time after time, that crappy year. Averting his gaze as if dismissing whatever Daniel said, when he was just trying not to look at him too much. He was too damn old to be acting like a teenager, and had his hands too damn full to fix it.

He drew breath to ask Bra'tac for details, and heard, like a voiceover from Murphy's worst nightmare, "Well, well. Some people just don't know when to leave."

Kinsey, _preceding_ Doctor Weir into the briefing, doing his pathetic rooster routine. Jack grimaced, then ignored him, opting for a quick evaluation of Weir over the temptation to point out that the only time Kinsey wasn't late for a meeting was when he crashed one uninvited.

Weir was slim, petite, attractive, cordial, tense or possibly uncomfortable with Kinsey's presence -- well, who wouldn't be -- and had, behind her friendly professional demeanor, _exactly_ the same formidable coldness that Daniel did. It was like looking into Daniel's eyes -- the same deceptive softness, the same startling chill. Jack blinked, cocking his head. _Interesting_.

"Colonel O'Neill," she said, briefly holding eye contact. Then "Major Carter," respectful but distanced acknowledgment, no hint of expectation that anything of gender or appearance connected them; and "Teal'c," with an unexpected warmth. "I know these are strange circumstances to be meeting for the first time."

"And you are ... ?" Jack cut in when she would have continued her opening spiel.

She almost smiled. Acknowledged, with the subtlest shift of expression, that he'd called her on not bothering to introduce herself. Acquiescing to do so, politely -- but with the lightest gloss of remonstration, since she knew he knew perfectly well. "I am ... Doctor Elizabeth Weir, Colonel." _OK,_ her voice said. _Jerk on chain accepted, maybe merited in this case. But don't push it_. She didn't push it, either. Could have added something arch like "The new civilian administrator of this facility." Or something cutting like "I see you didn't get the memo." Didn't opt for needless aggression; didn't lower herself to that.

Kinsey promptly lowered himself right down to the next level of the base: "You can just call her your one hope of ever stepping through the stargate again."

"Bit of a mouthful," Jack said mildly.

Weir tried to begin again, casting herself as the weak party this time in a bid to put the rest of them at ease: "I know I'm playing catch-up -- "

Jack _really_ didn't have the patience for that. "Actually it's all relative, ma'am. Carter could explain it better -- " He glanced casually down at the table. " -- if we had more time."

Carter gave a wan smile, enduring his use of her as the butt of a redirection.

Weir assessed the termination of opening salvos and said, "Shall we have a seat then?"

As the rest of them sat, Jack felt a massive, buzzing dislocation in his head. He hid it in a pinch of his brow meant to look fatigued or aggravated. Crap. He sensed Daniel checking him in his own peripheral vision, willed him not to make a thing of it. Daniel looked down as if his chair had caught on something. Jack managed to take his seat and produce a look of attention.

"Obviously this is a situation of grave importance," Doctor Weir began yet again.

OK, no matter how pro forma, that was just too much. Jack said, "She's quick." Daniel took the opportunity to glance at him. Carter seemed unaware that anything was wrong.

"Which is why I've taken it upon myself to come on down and hear what Mister Bra'tac has to say personally," Kinsey said, responding to both Weir and Jack, which made him a liar _and_ an asshole.

"_Master_ Bra'tac," Jack said, wielding a pen and wishing for a baseball bat, trying to focus through the buzzing in his head. "Master."

"I beg your pardon," Kinsey said, with laughing scorn. Jack fiddled with his pen, appearing to return Kinsey's stare, in fact watching Weir evaluate the lines of tension across the table. She found Kinsey's attempt at glaring Jack down unimpressive. Half a point to her for that.

Kinsey blinked first. "So you believe the Goa'uld Anubis is planning to attack."

"You may be certain of it," Bra'tac said somberly.

Kinsey shook his head in disgust. "I'll say this: The timing is impeccable. The moment we suspend Stargate operations, you pull this out of your hat."

"Mister _Vice_ President," Jack said, "if you're suggesting that we'd make something like this up -- "

"Yes, Colonel, that's exactly what I'm suggesting."

Jack was starting to lose his temper. Damned crap in his head. His fuse wasn't normally so short, not even with this fucking shrub. "Yes well that is exactly what we do," he said. "We sit around on our fat asses and create scenarios that put the planet at risk, that's exactly what we do."

Kinsey shot back, "Oh, I think you'd do just about anything -- "

"Gentlemen." Weir had seen enough of the pissing contest. "For the purposes of this discussion let's assume that Master Bra'tac is in earnest and that the threat is real."

"Do you even know what the threat _is_?" Daniel said. Apparently some continuation of whatever they'd talked about this morning. Probably how Weir had never been through the gate and couldn't make an informed decision without firsthand knowledge of what she was dealing with. "Anubis is half Goa'uld, half ascended Ancient, with the knowledge and technology at his disposal to wipe us all from the face of the Earth."

Weir accepted that, but said, "What about negotiating?"

There it was: what Hayes hired a civilian for. "Emasculation" didn't begin to cover it. Had she not _read_ the freaking _reports_? "Oh for cryin' out loud. That's nuts." An ominous silence made him look around. OK, what he'd _meant_ was "that's so naive and uninformed as to amount to idiocy," but "nuts" had summed it up well enough, he thought. "What?"

Now only Daniel would look at him. "You just said 'dorentis.'"

"Did not," he said, seeing the truth in Daniel's eyes. It was starting.

"Did too," Daniel said softly.

Goddammit. God fucking dammit. "'Dorentis.' What is that?"

"Latin?" Kinsey said, for some bizarre reason actually making an attempt to figure it out.

"No, it's not," Weir said. Her attention was focused on Jack, not on the question of linguistic origin, which required no thought for her to process. These people and their twenty fucking languages -- so much language in their heads that they stopped making assessments based on words at all. She was evaluating how impaired he was, and doing it with the dispassionate concern of a scientist looking at a fruit fly.

Daniel tried to redirect the issue to the futility of diplomacy and away from Jack's lapse into Ancient. "I think what Colonel O'Neill is trying to say is that, based on our past experiences, trying to negotiate would be insane. Crazy."

"Yeah, I got that," Weir said quietly, watching Jack.

_OK, lady. So it's clear I'm having a problem. So you know what that means, right? That means we have to do this thing, now. Today._ He swallowed. _Whatever it is._

"However," Carter said, speaking up for the first time to continue the redirection and succeeding in pulling Weir's attention from Jack, "we believe that there may be alien technology within our reach that could defeat Anubis."

"So now you're pulling a raygun out of your hat," Kinsey said.

"Weapons capable of defending this planet," Teal'c said calmly.

Kinsey was reduced to saying, "I can't believe we're sitting here listening to this."

Doctor Weir hadn't yet given up diplomacy in the matter of Kinsey v. SG-1. "Mister Vice President," she said, "on his last mission -- "

"Oh," Kinsey said, cutting her off for the third time, "I am aware of the events that have once again compromised Colonel O'Neill's _invaluable_ judgment, and the fact that on his last _official_ mission he has incurred the wrath of humanity's worst enemy on behalf of us all."

Jack bulled right past the implication that he'd be relieved of active duty. "Wait a minute," he said. "I thought you didn't buy into the whole invasion thing."

Kinsey faltered, and Weir took the opportunity to step in with "The fact is, until we know the location of the Lost City -- "

"I know where it is," Jack said. It blurted out of him, surprising him as much as everyone else.

After a moment, Weir said, "You know where it is ... now?"

"I will," he said, maybe a little too bitterly. "It's in there somewhere." A lameass claim. OK, enough. Enough of Kinsey's interference and Weir's dancing to accommodate him without offending, enough playing defense. "Look," he said, "let me make this simple. I come up with the Lost City, we go find it. Yes or no?"

"No!" Kinsey cried.

Jack looked at him. Let the reflexive outcry hang itself in the air. Then he shifted his gaze to Weir. _Time to find out who's really in charge here._ "Who are you?" he asked, looking her straight in the eyes. "Really? And why _are_ you here?"

It was a challenge. Attempting to answer would put her on the defensive. It was also a dare: a demand for her to ask the question of herself, decide whether she was Kinsey's lapdog or Hayes' peacenik spy or a good-faith leader. She didn't take the bait, and that was a good sign; whatever her purpose here, she was confident of her own integrity, and she treated the question as rhetorical. She looked at him -- into him -- and what she was deciding was whether he was worth staking the fate of the world on. She didn't know yet. But whatever she saw made her willing to give him a chance.

"I will consider it," she said, with a nod of respect, from a firm position of strength that left no question who was running the operation now. In that moment Jack saw the illusory puppet strings dissolve. Kinsey saw it, too, and he was pissed. Kinsey'd thought he had her in the bag.

"Thank you," Jack said, with commensurate respect.

Bra'tac, impatient and probably nonplussed by the childish antagonism he'd seen at this table and the dismaying fact that a strutting rooster like Kinsey could hold such high office, said, "I must return to Chulak."

"I too will go," Teal'c said, "in the hope of procuring ships and warriors to defend this world."

A military CO might have felt compelled to grant pro-forma permission. Weir was a civilian, and Stargate operations were technically suspended for review and reorganization; she had no authority over Teal'c. All she said was "Good luck."

It was a fitting enough way to end the meeting. Jack felt his team hesitate for a breath, waiting by habit to be dismissed. He got up so that they would, and left, so that they would, leaving Weir to take her reaming from Kinsey in private.

_Hang on to that ball,_ Jack thought.

&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;

After he'd seen Teal'c and Bra'tac off, he entertained an endless queue of concerned personnel. He issued an honest-to-god memo, breaking a seven-year streak, to answer the most common questions and shorten the time he had to spend with each person who came in. By late morning he couldn't stand it anymore. He'd done what he could to keep the base running at minimum setting. He tore that morning's crossword out of the paper he'd brought from home and went to Daniel's office.

"Hey, Jack," Daniel said from the corner by a bookcase, mildly surprised.

Jack gestured to the artifact-strewn desk. "Mind if I ... ?" He sat down before Daniel answered. "'Cause, you know, if I spew any Ancient, I might as well be where you can grab it to add to your whosicon."

"Lexicon," Daniel said by reflex, smiling just at the end, eyes warming. "Thanks, Jack. That could be very helpful."

Jack grunted, and applied himself to the crossword. His pager didn't go off and Daniel's phone didn't ring and for a blessed forty minutes they just worked in companionable silence. Daniel sat quietly in the corner, one eye on him, one eye on the dusty tome he was perusing, and the shifting dislocation in Jack's head settled, for just a little while, into something like peace. _I should have spent more time down here, just sitting_, he thought. It was just one more woulda-shoulda in a stupidly long list, and it would have looked weird to the staff and wasn't really something he could have done anyway, but just for now, under suspended operations and extraordinary circumstances, it was ... nice.

The answer to 8 Down had just come to him out of nowhere when he heard Daniel stir, perking up at something he read. He didn't look at Jack as he came over and held the book open.

"This mean anything to you?" Daniel asked.

"No," he said, filling in 8 Down and getting 13 Across as he was doing it. When you got on a roll with these things, it just kept coming.

"Could you at least _look_ at it?"

"Daniel, I don't speak Ancient. Yet. And when I do, eventually, you know I'll never understand it."

"You have to try."

"Look, last time things just popped into my head." Like the answer to 20 Across. Cool. He started to write it in.

"Frond is head."

Non sequitur of the month award to Daniel, as usual. "All right, now, see, I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Well maybe if you stopped working on this stupid -- " Daniel snatched the crossword away.

"Hey hey hey!" he said, grabbing for it, too slow. "I'd like to at least finish that while I _can_." _And don't stand over here, goddammit, it's still too fresh and you smell like my fucking soap._

Carter came in through the far door. She brightened at the sight of Jack there, as if happy to see him making an effort to help Daniel out, and then came closer and saw the crossword puzzle and scowled. "I thought you were supposed to be -- "

"In Thirteen Across you wrote 'teonas,'" Daniel said.

"Yeah? So? What's it mean?"

"Well, I don't know. You tell me. Eight Down you wrote 'proclarush.'"

"What's Eight Down?" Carter asked, ever the straight man.

_Way to go. Encourage him, why don't you._

"Um, 'Label,'" Daniel said. "There's empty spaces, I think the answer is supposed to be 'identification.' Thirteen Across is 'Sphere' ... Jack this is it," he said, with sudden intensity.

This close, it was as if Daniel's body exerted a magnetic pull on his. Jack leaned back in the chair to get a few more inches of distance. "Now, see, I assume we still speak the same language ... mostly," he began.

"Sphere. Planet. Label. Name."

As frustrated physically as mentally, Jack threw his hands out. "Following! You! Still! Not!"

"'Proclarush teonas.' I think you wrote the name of the planet where we'll find the Lost City in the crossword."

Well, hell -- that meant he wasn't getting the real answers at all. "Bit of a jump," he said, slowly.

"Well why else would you do that?"

Carter had a quick, acerbic answer. "The clue for Seven Down is 'Celestial body,' and he wrote 'Uma Thurman.'"

_Aw, c'mon -- that one was good_. And Daniel's name didn't fit.

"It has to mean something," Daniel said.

"It does." It did. There was no doubt in his mind. But he didn't know what, and it wasn't his job to figure it out, goddammit, and suddenly he'd kill for a chicken salad sandwich. "I'm hungry," he announced, and got up to head for the mess. At least while he was walking he'd get a couple of minutes of peace.

_It has to go down this way_, he told himself. _Just let it happen. You can do that. You did it in bed, you can do it for this._

Bending over for the Ancients.

He'd done a lot worse to save lives.

The minute they had their food, the two of them started up again. He wanted to tell them it was so simple, why couldn't they see it? But he didn't know what "it" was. When his hand reached out and stripped the SGC patch from Daniel's shoulder, their eyes met in a frozen moment. Christ, were the _Ancients_ going to out him? Start tangling their cryptic clues in with his tangled personal life? If they'd use a crossword puzzle, would they use Daniel? He wanted to get up, get the hell out, reduce the risk of being compromised, but he found himself spinning the circular patch into a more satisfying orientation on the table. He couldn't stop himself. He couldn't help fighting it, and he kept losing.

Carefully, mildly, Daniel ventured to ask what he was doing.

"At," he said.

"What?"

"That."

"That's at?"

"Stop ... that."

He saw the gears turning in Daniel's head. Adrenaline must have put them into overdrive. Daniel reached for his notebook, drew something that Jack thought looked like a cave painting of Aunt Jemima. Asked him what it was.

Jack opened his mouth to say Aunt Jemima, or maybe Mrs. Butterworth, and said, "Shh."

After the inevitable confusion over _that_, he got them to understand that it was the sound that went with the thing Daniel had drawn, and then Daniel had his epiphany, and Jack had to get out, just get out of there, get away from Carter's work-focused innocence of the situation and Daniel's magnetic proximity and things that would give him impulses to do things and say things that were beyond his control or comprehension. He half-stumbled down the corridor and locked himself in a stall in the men's room until he'd more or less stopped shaking and was reasonably sure his chicken-salad sandwich wouldn't come out the way it went in.

A murmur at the door, and familiar footsteps. Daniel waving someone off and coming in to talk to him. "Jack? You OK?"

"Dandy," Jack said. He unlocked the stall and came out to wash his face three times, avoiding Daniel's folded arms and raised brows as long as possible. "Well, maybe that mayo was a little off."

"I know you'd rather be left in peace to distract yourself," Daniel said after a while, "but I'm going to need your help associating the gate symbols with the phonetics. You gonna be up for that, you think?"

He leaned on the sink, trying not to pant. "Yeah. Just gimme a minute. I'll swing by."

"A real minute, or a crossword minute?"

"You took the crossword away from me. Schmuck."

He looked up reluctantly when Daniel laughed, and winced at the beautiful sight of genuine Daniel laughter, and looked away. He straightened and applied himself to drying his face and tugging his fatigues back into their usual semblance of shapelessness.

"Sorry," Daniel said, shutting it down. "That could be a very useful word to know in Ancient, though. Whatever it was."

"Schmuck," he said again, with more force, enjoying it maybe a little too much. Served the fucker right for turning the goddamn highbeams on him. "It means -- " He stopped. "Never mind what it means."

Daniel bit his lip and spun on his heel. "See you in a minute."

"Yeah. Sure. Whatever."

He listened to Daniel's steps recede, the door open, the door catch as a jiggling airman blew through it and made a beeline for a urinal, nodded to the desperately abbreviated salute, and walked himself out into the corridor.

_I can't do it this time. But I have to. Made the choice. Gotta see it through._

He'd forgotten what the loss of control felt like.

It felt like hell.

&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;

Daniel thought the process of presenting gate symbols to Jack would be fast and simple, but first it turned out that Jack couldn't retrieve phonetic associations for all of them, and once he had there were serious ambiguities that Daniel would be able to resolve only by recording Jack saying the names of the symbols, recording Jack saying a variety of Ancient words, having Jack write out his own phonetic representations of what he was saying, and running it all through a variety of software while he listened on headphones.

Jack surprised him by cooperating patiently with the recording and writing. Then he said, "So how long's the rest of this gonna take?"

"A while," Daniel said. "I appreciate you bearing with me through all this. I can take it from here."

Jack lifted a thousand-year-old Solonisian puzzle icon off the desk and turned it upside down. "It's nearly six," he said, wiggling the artifact, then bringing it close to examine the way the pieces interlocked. "Why don't you dump that stuff onto your laptop and come work at my place? We can get takeout. Have a phoneme party."

Daniel would have liked nothing better. Actually, not true -- he was very tired, and all he really wanted was to crawl into Jack's bed beside Jack and sleep. "I'd like that," he said. "But I need the mainframe to process some of this stuff. And once we _have_ the gate address -- "

"OK. So I'll hang out."

Daniel poked at his keyboard. "It could take a few hours."

Weir had left at five. Sam was still around; she could have worked 24/7 and never gotten through everything on her to-do list, and despite a house full of computers she liked working here better than working at home. Daniel gathered that Pete had taken some kind of a redeye in the wee hours of the morning to be back for his shift. It would be better if Jack stayed, and Daniel wanted Jack to stay, but he also wanted Jack to rest, and he knew how much Jack hated temp quarters here. He couldn't really sleep in Daniel's spare chair. It would be best if he went home. But Daniel really couldn't come with him.

Jack put the artifact down and looked at him until he looked up. Jack's head cocked, with a wry expression. Two days of gut-wrenching conversation compiled in Daniel's head the way his data were compiling on the mainframe. Jack didn't want to be in that house without him. Jack wanted to be where he was. There was just nothing for Jack to do here.

After a long moment, Daniel said, "Your Gameboy's in the bottom drawer of the green file cabinet."

"Yes!" Jack crowed.

Three minutes later he was sprawled in the chair in the corner, maneuvering with intense focus through whatever games he had on the thing. He refused to play with the sound muted, and it had driven Daniel so crazy that he'd broken into Jack's office late one night and stolen it. The mystery of the theft had gone unsolved for about a week, until Daniel confessed because there was genuine concern about base security. When he told them how he'd done it, keycard encryption took a leap forward; the techs still didn't believe that Sam hadn't helped him. _Necessity is the mother of invention_, he'd thought -- and _Never let the boss know you can type_. The Gameboy itself, however, he had not given up. He'd changed its hiding place discreetly and frequently. Jack could have just gotten another one, but he never had. Came up with every possible excuse -- discontinued model, proprietary games on it, same one never came up on eBay, it stored his high scores, there was a glitch in it that let him hack a favorite module and couldn't be reproduced in another unit, so on and so forth. Hammond, exasperated, had come close to ordering Daniel to surrender the damn thing. Now Daniel listened to the clicking buttons and the grunts and groans that came out of Jack while he played, and knew exactly why it had driven him crazy. It was nothing to do with the sound effects. "Oh, yeah," Jack said softly, apparently oblivious of his own verbalizing. "Get in there, baby. _Oh_ yeah. Beautiful." Daniel smiled. Now he was sorry to put on the headphones.

Hours passed. Jack brought him food from the mess, sat and ate with him while he worked, answered a few questions, went back to his game. Wandered the corridor, came back with coffee for Daniel, stretched out on the floor to try and nap. That was the only thing he did that was truly distracting. Daniel kept looking over and losing himself in the rangy lines of Jack's body.

Suddenly something in the drone of Jack's recorded voice in his ears caught his attention. He changed a couple of parameters, waited, listened. Watched the visual representation of the sound waves. Paused it, overlaid it on two others stopped at the same point.

"Yes," he said softly, and reached for his notebook to write out the symbols. In the end, when things came clear to him, he always reached for real paper and pen.

Then he said, "Jack."

Jack grunted and lifted his arm from his face.

"I've got the address."

"Call Weir." Jack put his arm back.

He called her cell, her hotel, finally paged her; she called back immediately -- a restaurant payphone from the sound of it -- and said she'd meet him in the control room in twenty minutes. He called Sam's lab. She was in the middle of something and glad for the time to finish up.

"Control room, fifteen minutes," he told Jack.

Jack rolled suddenly to his feet. "We have to pack."

"What?"

"Gear up and pack. We have to go." Jack was already out the door.

Daniel, notebook thrust into his pocket, tagged behind him to the ready room. Jack couldn't articulate what they had to pack, or why. Frustrated, he filled a backpack for himself and then just kept gesturing at Daniel. When Daniel refused to put on BDUs or tac vest until they were actually ready to head out, Jack strode off to the elevator. Daniel followed. In one of the equipment rooms, Jack started a pile. He'd survey the area, seize on something, add it, survey again, seize. Daniel reached a handset off the wall and called Sam. "He's doing it again," he told her. When he explained, she said, "Just let him work, I guess. Weir'll be here in a minute. Is anyone else down there?" There was nothing to do but leave a couple of SFs to watch Jack, and head for the control room.

Weir was there waiting. Sam checked the address, found it was one they'd tried and failed to gate to a couple of years ago. The gate was probably buried -- "Lost in fire," Daniel murmured -- but Sam could calculate the planet's location within about an hour. They couldn't take _Prometheus_. Last line of defense against Anubis, if they failed. Ship deployment wasn't technically Weir's decision, but the military higher-ups would back her on this, and Daniel had to admit he agreed.

"Maybe Teal'c has something by now," Sam said, trying to look hopeful.

Weir said, "Where's Colonel O'Neill?"

Daniel looked at Sam and said, "Packing."

They made arrangements to have Teal'c contacted, then went down to check on Jack. Daniel tried to be upbeat. This was what was _supposed_ to be happening. Everything Jack had done the last time had been to a purpose. This boded well; they were making progress, and it was happening a lot faster than it had the first time.

"Grab a naquadah generator, will you?" Jack asked Sam, and walked away.

Sam looked at Weir, looked at Daniel, shrugged, started off to get one.

The phone rang for Weir. "Teal'c has a ship," she reported, surprised and gratified, when she hung up. "They'll be ready for you in seven hours."

Sam had paused to hear the message. Jack had come back in and hadn't stopped moving. "So we're going?" he said, flipping back the top of a storage box, removing tools and replacing them with others.

Daniel and Sam looked at Weir.

"Yes," she said. "You have ... a go, is that how you phrase it?"

He and Sam shared a look of relief. Jack just kept making his pile.

"But I want you all to get some sleep," Weir said. "On Earth, not on Chulak. I want you here until we receive final confirmation about the ship."

"We have to pack," Jack said. "Carter? Generator?"

"Right there, sir."

"Crate it up and then find me some ... " He winced, pinching the bridge of his nose. "XR32 cable, the kind with the extra shielding."

"Yes, sir," she said, but she hesitated, looking at Weir, whose statement about getting some sleep still hung in the air, close to an order but not precisely phrased. It was the first sign Daniel had seen that serving under a civilian made Sam uncertain. With a military base commander, she'd have known what was an order and whose orders to obey. Right now she had a compromised CO who hadn't been relieved of command and a base CO who wasn't being clear with her. Daniel wondered if this would be a continuing problem, how many times he was going to find himself in this position, the position he'd been in when Bra'tac made contact through the gate, running unobtrusive interference and issuing quiet reminders. He didn't want to become Weir's de-facto staff aide. He really, really had other things to do.

"You won't be able to stop him 'til he's done," he said, to ease this particular little awkwardness, not sure that Weir had even noticed it. "Jack, we have about seven hours. If we help you finish this, will you get some sleep?"

"How the hell do I know, Daniel?"

He couldn't know what he'd be impelled to do at any given moment. The horror and frustration of the loss of control was obvious enough now to be evident even to people who hadn't seen Jack pale and shaking in the restroom.

Daniel looked pointedly at Weir.

"Well, help him," she said, her hands spread. "Then try to rest. Try to get him to rest. That's all we can do."

They grabbed some airmen and helped Jack finish his pile, organize it, crate it for transport. It took about forty-five minutes. They needed Sam because she was the only one who knew what and where most of the things Jack asked for were. When it was finished, she went to run her calculations, saying she'd catch a few hours in quarters after that. "Maybe you should take him home, Daniel," she said to him, quietly, off to the side, before she left. Jack was checking and rechecking the gear, compulsively.

"I think he'd rest better there," Daniel acknowledged, carefully neutral. "But he might get another brainstorm. He should probably stay here."

"You stayed with him, the last time." She was looking at Jack, not him, so he had trouble gauging her expression.

"Yeah," he said, walking on glass. He had stubbornly stayed with Jack, glued himself to him -- more fiercely, he understood in retrospect, than the situation had called for. For years he'd been acting the way Jack was acting right now, compelled by motivations he didn't comprehend. He knew what they were, now. He had no idea what Sam knew.

"You should do that again. This is really hard for him. He trusts you. He won't let me help."

He couldn't tell anything from her voice, and he despised the fact that he was trying to, that he was letting circumstances force him to play this horrible game. "Um, yeah. OK."

"I drove by on my way back from the airport," she said. Still watching Jack. "Sometime before four a.m. Just thinking. Checking to see if the lights were on, I suppose. I don't know what I'd have done if they were." Only the briefest pause. "I saw your Jeep."

"Somebody had to keep an eye on him," he said. The excuse nearly choked him.

Sam turned to him, lifted a hand. Slowly, gently, she smoothed her thumb over the small patch of beard burn on the side of his chin. "New razor, huh?" she said, in the softest possible voice.

Jack had stopped what he was doing and was looking right at them.

"Something like that," Daniel said. His limbs had gone numb; he could feel his pupils contract. This wasn't a game. This wasn't a covert op. This wasn't a bedroom farce. This was Sam, and this was so, so, _so_ not the time.

"I knew there was someone," she said. "I _love_ being right." She gave his chin a squeeze -- a little too hard -- and let her hand drop. "I'm glad it's you, Daniel."

"Sam -- " he started, pierced by the harsh undertone that belied her words, by the look that flashed in her eyes as she turned, but she was striding away.

"Get some rest, sir," she called to Jack. If anything passed between them as she went by, Daniel couldn't see it. Didn't want to see it. Shouldn't see it.

Jack turned, and ordered the airmen to start shifting the boxes to the gateroom.

&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;

Jack stripped down to his briefs in silence and lay down on the bunk, on his side, facing Daniel across the small room. "Cell" was more like it -- the most cramped and claustrophobic of one-man temp quarters, deliberately chosen by Jack over roomier VIP quarters, as though he needed to put himself in custody. Jack slid one hand under the pillow and drew the blanket over his hips with the other. Daniel sat in the steel chair, a book in his lap.

Neither of them spoke. Jack closed his eyes after a while, his breathing calm, but didn't snore. Daniel read until he was nodding off. It was what they'd done the last time. This time, when Daniel startled awake at nothing and saw that Jack still wasn't asleep, he got up and crossed the room and flipped off the overhead.

Daniel moved on silent, stocking feet to scrape the chair a half-inch along the floor, as though he'd sat back down. Then, careful to keep his bearings, he crossed through the darkness and lay down fully dressed behind Jack. The bed gave only a soft twang, no more than if Jack had shifted his weight.

Daniel pulled a generous wad of toilet paper from his pocket, stuffed there on his last visit to the men's room, and reached around to press it into Jack's hand. Jack hesitated, then closed his fingers on it. Daniel pulled the blanket back, reached into Jack's briefs, found him soft. He worked Jack's cock out gently through the fold, and gently stroked it to hardness. Teased with feathery touches, long light strokes and tugs. Ran his fingernails over the tightening sac of scrotum through the cotton. Jack kept perfectly still. Daniel lifted his hand up to his mouth, loaded it with spit, palmed Jack's cock and closed his fingers. Saliva wasn't much of a lubricant, but the wetness felt good. He pumped gently, brushing the head with his thumb. After a while, a drop of semen oozed out; he spread it lightly, then closed his hand at the tip and pressed down, a long slow simulation of penetration.

A slight tremor went through Jack, not enough to creak the bed. Daniel firmed his touch and began to work the shaft up and down. Thumb pressing the back, fingers laid flat along the front. A little faster. A little tighter. Moving just his hand, from the wrist, not letting the motion transfer into either them or the bedsprings. Faster. Still no sound. His forearm began to ache. He pressed his face into Jack's soft, spiky hair and breathed in. Jack's arm moved slightly, down and around Daniel's. In the dead quiet, Daniel heard the whispery crinkle of tissue as Jack covered the head of his penis.

Daniel jerked in short, tight strokes, very fast, just his fingers. Jack came in silence, motionless, a soundless catch of breath in his chest and a long trembling exhalation that Daniel could feel but not hear. Daniel closed his hand fully around the shaft and squeezed into the ejaculations. He could hear Jack's right hand fist the corner of the pillow. He kept squeezing, hard, rhythmically, until the pulses stopped, then eased his grip to cradle and soothe. Held Jack's dick as it slowly softened, then as Jack wiped himself. Took the tissue from him, wadded it around the stickiness, stuffed it back in his pocket; helped tuck Jack back into his briefs, and tucked the blanket back around Jack's hips.

Jack's hand closed over Daniel's, over the blanket; fingers wove between his. Daniel pressed his lips against the back of Jack's neck. A deep sigh and shudder drew a low answering twang from the bed. Then Jack slumped into sleep. Began to snore softly.

Daniel had meant to get up before that. He was very tired; he knew the snores would lull him to sleep. He let himself go. It was a risk, but he was dressed and on top of the blanket, and the chances of anyone bursting in without knocking were slim. He breathed with Jack, inhaling the scent of him, exhaling contentment. He slept, and dreamed a rush of stars.

Jack woke him with a firm squeeze and release of his hand. For a moment, in the pitch dark, he had no idea where he was. Jack slipped silently from under the blanket and out of the bed. Daniel rolled to his feet, wincing at a sound of springs that he knew was louder to him than to any bored, sleepy airman in the surveillance center, then waited for Jack to get back into the bunk so that he could flip the light on. Instead he felt Jack's hands, guiding him to step back against the wall.

_Knees knees knees_, he thought, understanding right away. He couldn't protest out loud, couldn't make himself understood; he tapped Jack's chest but Jack shook it off, intently focused on unbuckling and unbuttoning without making any sound. Jack lowered his pants without a rustle, slid his briefs down to mid-thigh. Pressed his hips firmly back against the wall.

He bit the inside of his cheek to keep from moving or making a sound. He thought Jack would plunge down on him, make it fast, but Jack was teasing him erect with slow, soft touches of his lips, his tongue. If Daniel checked his watch there'd be a flare of electroluminescence. He had to trust that there was time for this.

The dark and the silence were a form of sensory deprivation. His perception of touch expanded and eclipsed his other senses, until the world consisted only of the chill concrete down his back and against his ass, the grip of Jack's hands on his hips, the sensation of Jack's mouth on his cock. At first it was torment to stifle his own sounds. He registered a dim surprise that Jack would trust him to be silent, would risk this at all knowing what a noisy lay he was. Then the silence became intensely erotic. The steamy warmth of Jack's breath at his groin, the pitch dark enfolding them, the hot, blind, trembling intimacy. Jack's tongue left wet, random patterns on his shaft, his balls; Jack's lips nibbled tenderly at the tip of his penis, then held it still while the tip of his tongue lightly circled the opening, dipped down the slit. What would have come out through Daniel's throat rippled down his body, expressed by muscle and skin. Jack's thumbs stroked the hollows of his hips, whispering endearments through touch.

Abruptly Jack's tongue was twice as slick as it had been, more slippery than saliva, and Daniel realized he was leaking. He went almost faint with the sensation of his own arousal swirling back over his crown. The licks and nibbles gave way to a thick engulfing. Jack's tongue surged thick and wet and warm along the underside of his cock, taking it into the hot breathy cavern of his mouth, nestling the tip into the soft wetness of his throat, and then slid back and away and completely off. When it returned, it was in a drenched slide of lips, telling Daniel that he'd pulled back to wet them with the spit and precome on his tongue. His tongue swirled and stroked until his lips ringed the base of the shaft, and then his mouth finally closed down into one long, hard, airless, soundless suck.

Daniel came in a paralyzed spasm, flat against the wall. The only release was through his cock, an intense gushing surge; he'd never been so acutely aware of the contraction in his groin, his ass, his balls, the pumping flow of semen, every pulse another jolt of ecstasy. He couldn't jerk or buck or thrust; Jack's hands had him locked against the wall. He shook soundlessly inside the iron grip while his body emptied into Jack's mouth. He became aware that Jack had drawn back a little, letting it pool in the back of his throat -- holding off swallowing to keep the noise down, maybe, or to be sure he didn't choke into a coughing fit.

It took a long time for the flow to tail off. It felt like quarts had gushed out of him, though he knew it was only a couple of spoonfuls. Jack's lips held his dick patiently, waiting; Jack's hand reached under to gently cup Daniel's balls. After another few seconds, when euphoria started to seep through the ecstatic paralysis, Daniel got an arm to work and moved his hand to Jack's head, trying to tell him he was done. In bed, in Jack's house, they'd communicated more through sounds and looks than he'd realized. He didn't know if Jack would know whether a touch to the head meant 'finished' or 'wait, stay, not done yet.'

Jack's tongue fluttered over the orgasm-sensitized crown of Daniel's penis. Daniel's balls twitched in Jack's palm; Daniel's whole groin twitched, and he winced and gritted his teeth against the sound that nearly squeezed out on the surprise afterwave of pleasure. He'd _thought_ he was done, but Jack had learned his body better than he'd realized, the last two days.

Jack raised his face and tipped his mouth off, slowly. His hand found Daniel's and brought it to his throat, just under his chin. He swallowed, once -- his hand pressing Daniel's fingers into it, feeling him feel it. He let go of Daniel's hand and leaned forward, pushing Daniel's shirt up; he pressed his lips, his face into Daniel's belly, and stayed like that for almost a minute. Daniel stroked his hair, then just let his hand lie there, warm on the solidity of Jack's head. He couldn't ease what was happening inside it. His chest hurt, an ache of tenderness at the intimacy of Jack's face pressed into his skin, a swell of heartbreak at the understanding that this, now, was their private goodbye.

Finally, after a deep, soundless sigh and a wash of warm breath over Daniel's belly, Jack pushed back and gave Daniel's hip a gentle pat. Together they reassembled his clothes, with the same slow, silent motions, as if they were under water.

When Daniel was dressed again, tucked and buttoned and buckled, Jack took him by the elbows, and Daniel returned the grip and helped haul him up. Jack made no sound, but Daniel caught a painful crackle of cartilage. He thought Jack would move back to the bed, but felt himself drawn forward, and followed until Jack stopped and took his hand and ran it along the back of the steel chair. With his cat's eyes, or whatever spatial orientation he kept even in the deepest dark, Jack had walked them right to the chair without blundering. Daniel groped gingerly for the book, found it, picked it up, and sat. Jack smoothed a hand over his head, and Daniel gave a very slight nod. As Jack moved away, Daniel slumped down, laid the book open on his stomach, and closed his eyes.

He didn't hear the bed creak under Jack's weight. A few minutes passed, and he started to doze, floating on endorphins, softly fantasizing through a memory of Jack sucking him. When the bed did give a firm creak, he thought it was Jack finally lying down again, but then the lights came on in a blinding glare. Daniel sat up squinting, blinking, a hand raised to fend off the worst of it.

"Sorry, Daniel," Jack said. "I was gonna let you sleep, but I couldn't find my shirt." He stood by the light switch in his fatigue pants, barefoot, bare-chested, tousle-headed.

At this moment, in this context, it was possibly the sexiest thing Daniel had ever seen. Then he registered the tags hanging on their chain, nestled in the down of hair at the center of Jack's chest.

_He took them off_. Daniel hadn't felt the chain when he kissed the back of Jack's neck or nuzzled in to sleep. Jack had taken the dogtags off, somehow, at some point before Daniel lay down with him, and put them back on before he flipped the light switch. The tags were damped and wouldn't have jingled; their removal could only have been symbolic, as if Jack had known that Daniel would eventually get into the bunk with him -- as if Jack couldn't do what they'd done in a military installation while wearing the emblem of his service.

He was staring at them. He made himself look up and found Jack giving him an inquiring frown. He returned a wry smile with a mild expression of shrugging, hoped it covered what he really felt -- a kind of betrayal, as if Jack had slipped his wedding ring back on, and a sudden shame, a complex of emotions he couldn't have articulated even if they could have talked about it. Jack frowned more deeply, cocked his head: _What?_

Daniel squinted down at his watch, bent his wrist up as if he were having trouble focusing. The book slid down and he fumbled to catch it. "What time is it?" he said, amazed at how bleary he sounded. Jack really was a bloody master at this stuff. Had set him up to look perfectly convincing.

"Time to go," Jack said, swiping his shirt from the foot of the bunk. A knock sounded at the door, and Jack said, "Come," and an airman stuck his head in to deliver a wake-up call, finding exactly what he was supposed to find: Doctor Jackson squinting and discombobulated in a chair clutching a book to him, the colonel relaxed, pulling his T-shirt on, thanking him for the call.

As the airman withdrew, Jack said, "I gotta wash up and take a leak. Meet you in the mess?"

"Coffee," Daniel said, as if it were the only word he could manage in the state he was in, and really that wasn't so far from the truth. But at the door he paused and said, "You OK, Jack? Sleep OK?"

"I slept some. Right now, that's close enough to OK."

"At least you had a _bed_," Daniel grumbled for the benefit of the presumed audience, and left with his book in his hand, barely acknowledging the nod of the airman posted to see that the colonel got whatever he needed.

_He got what he needed,_ Daniel thought to himself, firmly, in so many words.

Anything not to think about what he was leaving behind, that this was it, they were going to go to the Lost City now, and this might have been the last he'd ever have of what he'd only just found, what should have filled the rest of his life -- what couldn't have filled the rest of his life if it meant that Jack couldn't stand to wear that chain.

"Coffee," he said, in the elevator. Before he cleaned up, before he checked in with Weir, before he had to face Sam, before he lost it. "A lot of coffee."

^^^^^^^  
(series tbc)


End file.
